There are bound to be some surprises in there, along with the tried and tested such as Manek Growth propping up the UK All Companies sector. Its full -ear performance for 2013 was -2.1% compared to a 16.7% rise in the FTSE All Share.
Growth by name not nature
Manager Jayesh Manek describes this as “another” disappointing year for the fund – not the biggest shock when his five-year numbers show a loss for investors of 15.3% compared to the average of the UK All Companies sector that has returned a gain of 121.9%.
But then a 1.5% annual management charge on a £20m fund is still raking in £300,000 a year…
Later this week, once we have had the chance to analyse the numbers, we will let you know which funds you should have avoided and which gains you may have missed out on.
So that is all to look forward to tomorrow. In the meantime, the latest quarterly CBI and PricewaterhouseCoopers PwC survey (available here) of interviews with firms across financial services, nearly 10% of which are investment management businesses, has just been published.
Optimism slowing
The conclusion is that, of all the groups, investment managers had an impressive three months, with optimism up – for the ninth straight quarter – though not by as much as when the survey was done for December 2013.
As expected, they all expect their business volumes to have increased over the past three months (something quantifiable) and the same for the next three months. Also as expected, total operating costs are expected to increase hugely in both the past three and the coming three months as is profitability, looking backwards and forwards.
Heavily competitive
The single biggest reason for not increasing business in the next year is given as a lack of demand, with competition and regulation following just behind.
There are plenty of positives here from the investment management group respondents, backed up by some excellent fund managers acting on the input from even better analysts and researchers; developed world economies are picking up as emerging ones are slowing. Overall, the UK investment management industry is covered in a warm glow of: “Things are OK. They are not brilliant, but they are heading in the right direction”.
Looking at this objectively, sentiment surveys are excellent ways of asking investment managers today what they think of tomorrow. One problem is that they answer the question about tomorrow in the mood that they are in today so if they are upbeat today, they are automatically more upbeat about the future. It’s human nature.
What is hard fact and absolutely quantifiable, is the performance of funds – net of fees – that is the be-all-and-end-all for clients and that is what we will be concentrating on analysing for you in the coming week.
As a matter of interest, any of you able to tell us, outside the IMA categories, which have been the fund dogs and which the stars?
